Leon Bronstein was born in the Southern Ukraine on October 26, 1879, the son of a Jewish farmer. He moved to Odessa at age 9 to live with relatives and attend a prestigious private school. After graduation, he entered Odessa University. Leon was attracted to radical politics. The level of violence and discontent began to rise along the Russian countryside, brought on largely by Russian failure in the Russo-Japanese war and Bloody Sunday. "He was drawn into an underground socialist circle and introduced to Marxism"- Encyclopedia Britannica. Trotsky was soon organizing the Southern Russian Workers Union, which led to his first arrest and exile to Siberia."Though Trotsky was forced into exile, the unripeness of the authoritatian form of government spared his life for fifteen years."- Paul Mattick. While in exile, Leon married Alexandra Sokolovskaya, a Marxist radical who bore him two daughters. Leon escaped two years later and left his family behind. From then on, Leon assumed the last name Trotsky.

He went to England where he met Vladimir Lenin, instigator of the Communist Revolution. Trotsky attended the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party where he broke from Lenin.

Lenin's faction of the RSDP was the Bolsheviks, or majority; the other half was the Mensheviks or minority. Trotsky harshly criticised Lenin's committee policy as a slippery slope to dictatorship. Lenin's idea of forgoing democracy in order to ensure equality was emblematic of his philosophy that the end justifies the means. Simply put, all that matters is that the goal is achieved, no matter how one arrives at it.

This break would lead to long years of estrangement between the two. In Paris, Trotsky met Natalia Sedova; although they were never married, they lived together until Trotsky's Death. They had two sons - Lyova and Sergey. In 1905, Trotsky traveled to St. Petersburg to play a major role in a revolutionary attempt. Trotsky was a hero to the revolutionists, but the revolution soon collapsed. Trotsky was arrested, but he managed to escape before arriving at Siberia for imprisonment.

The Trotsky family then moved to Vienna where he lived until the first World War erupted in 1914. They then moved to Paris. Trotsky wrote articles and edited a newspaper, condemning the imperialist war. The Germans were striving for world domination by force, which Trotsky was wholly against. He felt that communist domination could only work if workers worldwide voluntarily threw off the shackles of their oppressors. Instead, the Soviet Union later would invade Eastern Europe, aggressively overthrowing governments and instituting puppet regimes.

Trotsky then bounced around from France to Spain to New York; no government would let him stay for long. During this period, Trotsky was equally critical of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, but during the war he drifted back to Lenin's side.

To address the question that was actually asked, unlike the other two responses, I can recommend three excellent books, Russia, the People and the Power by Robert G. Kaiser, The Russians by Hedrick Smith, and Behind the High Kremlin Walls by Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova. Some other good ones include "Mig Pilot", that is by the pilot who flew his fighter to Japan in 1975, I forget his name, "Breaking With Moscow" by Arkady N. Schevchenko and anything by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.Michael Montagne

That is more than you can say for now, with our grab-as-grab-can society imposed on them via just one or two corrupt leaders now retired to fat lives abroad together with those with the riches which those 'leaders' permitted them to scoop from the rest during the few years since '91

Russia is now the ruins of what was a great able and cultured nation only a few years ago. The common people - the vast majority -now live in abject poverty, in a 'market economy', which means you need money to live, and in the Russian climate, which has to be experienced to be believed.

That shows the erosive power of finance in the hands of a few malicious amoral villains. And those are the ones who now rule'our' world.

That should make us think, and see exactly who they are who are now paying all our presidents to do what they want. - Shouldn't it?

Before 1991-93 we (Russians) could be shure in our future, we had guarantees of medical service and education for-free. Also we had normal life level. But we had not enough commodities and products.

After 8 years of anti-Russian "democracy" and wild/criminal capitalism Russian GNP became extremely lower than before that period. People became extremely poor in this 8 years. Economy was almost destroyed.

Now we have true democratically choosen pro-Russian government. And we grow rich and repair our economy.

P.S. Excuse me for my terrible English

Lenin did many things when he was in charge of Russia and then the Soviet Union. Some are:

• He abolished the private ownership of property and nationalized all industry.
• He ended Russia's participation in World War 1 by entering into the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
• He abolished every other political party except for the Bolshevik Party and restricted any criticism of his way of governing the country.
• He eliminated the capitalist system and imposed socialism.
• He imposed "war communism" on the people of the country during the Russian Civil War, whereby all peasant farmers had to give almost all their crops to the government to feed people in the cities.
• He ran the Red side of the Civil War against the White forces.
• He had the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, his children and three servants murdered in cold blood.
• He ended "war communism" when it ruined the Soviet economy and then imposed the "New Economic Policy" which reintroduced limited forms of capitalism in order to improve the economy.
• He created the Soviet Union by joining with Ukraine, Belorussia and the Transcaucasus Federation by signing the Treaty of the Soviet Union in 1922.
• He created the Chekka, a secret police organization, which terrorized the population and any person who dared to disagree with what he felt was best for the country.

There are of course many things he did, but these are the most significant.

He wasn't afraid of Stalin. Lenin could have easily had Stalin executed anytime from 1917 through his death. Lenin believed, according to his testament, that Stalin would destroy the "world revolution" and believed that if given the power Lenin held during his tenure, Stalin would abuse it. The Central Committee ignored Lenin's testament, and by 1938, the majority of the members of the Central Committee deeply regretted doing so.

Lenin found Stalin too power-hungry and greedy to be the ruler of the largest country in the world, but never stated he feared Stalin.

The Russian Revolution was caused by several major factors:

1. The partial industrialization of Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which created an urban working class in places like St. Petersburg and Moscow that could organize against its exploitation through unions and workers councils (known as 'the soviets'). This enabled the workers to work together much more effectively against their bosses then the scattered, isolated, and thus largely de-politicized peasantry. The cities were also connected via trade and communication to the outside world, where intellectuals and workers alike had access to revolutionary ideas from western Europe such as Marxism.

2. The desperate poverty and gross inequality that marked Russian society created a deep well of discontent. The czar and the aristocracy, as well as Russia's capitalist class, lived in opulent luxury in palaces such as the Hermitage while most Russians lived in medieval conditions. In the countryside, most farmers still used wooden plow. Hundreds of thousands died from epidemics on a regular basis. 1/3 of all Russian babies died before their first birthday.

3. The entry of Russia into World War I brought all the class tensions of Russian society to a boiling point, especially when Russia's badly equipped and led army suffered a series of disastrous defeats. Food riots broke out in Russia's major cities and the countryside. The army and navy began to mutiny against a government they had no desire to fight and die for.

4. The czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was a weak and indecisive leader. He went back and forth between making concessions to his people and then opting for repressive measures. Therefore, he both allowed breathing space for a revolutionary movement to develop while creating fresh grievances that strengthened the political forces against him. Most importantly though, he was attempting to reform a corrupt, repressive, outdated system that could not be reformed at all.

5. Although many different groups were opposed to the czar, the Russian revolution was successful because the group that ended up leading it, the Bolsheviks, were dedicated, well-organized, and well-led.

Note: What is commonly called the "Russian Revolution" refers to the events which occurred in 1917 (there was also a smaller and less successful revolution in 1905).